Reasons To Watch Furious, Ranked

The first season of Furious just ended this week on Hulu. I dug it a lot. I’m going to tell you why. There won’t be any real spoilers in here beyond some general stuff. I would never do that to you.

Okay, here we go…

TEN: The official description of Furious goes like this…

FBI agent Alice Black is on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur.

… which is one of those plots that can go good or bad pretty easily. Like, if it’s done well, you get a cool psychological twister that hooks you in and doesn’t let go. If it’s not done well, it’s just some gory trash where a cop tracks down the killer in an empty warehouse and the killer’s maniacal laugh echoes through the unlit abyss. I was skeptical at first, both for that reason and because of the thing where I don’t usually dig dark serial killer dramas. Which brings me to…

NINE: I cannot believe how much I dug this show. I hope I’m making the point I think I’m making here. I’m speaking to the other people out there who saw the teasers for this show and said “hmm sex trafficking and psycho killers… no thank you.” You are my people. I’m with you. I waded into this gently for reasons I’ll get to later. To whatever degree “wow, even a wimp like Brian liked it” counts for something here, this is me saying that.

EIGHT: The showrunner here is Elizabeth Meriwether, best known for being the showrunner on the show New Girl, and if you can read those two pieces of information and not immediately picture Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson committing and/or investigating grisly murders together, well, maybe you need to get better at picturing things.

SEVEN: Allow me to introduce you to Special Agent Nora, as played by Quincy Tyler Bernstine…

On a show littered with heavy hitters and notable performances, Nora shined like a damn diamond — all shit-talking and smirking and not taking a lick of crap from anyone. There are about three or four characters on this show who could have carried their own series in another world, but she‘s way up near the top.

SIX: Scoot McNairy plays a detective named Danny Kelly, who, in the Furious universe, represents the only decent human being alive. He is doing an unplaceable accent that sounds kind of like if a guy cloned himself as a child and the two versions of himself lived their whole lives in Boston and New York, respectively, and then at about age 40 they got melded back together into one person. I love him very much.

FIVE: I said I would not spoil major elements of this show and I’m going to keep my word as best I can, but I will say this: sometimes, on a show like this that looks at the limits of morality and depravity, the ending can be… unsatisfying. I did not have that problem with Furious, mostly. If you’re going into this hoping to see a bunch of crappy dudes get wrecked, you will get just about everything you asked for, give or take some gray areas about what counts as justice.

FOUR: I am a smartass little shithead in a wheelchair, so I am always delighted to see other smartass little shitheads in wheelchairs depicted on television, especially when they are played by disabled actors. This is the thing I referenced earlier about why I started watching the show in the first place. I saw this clip floating around, one where a character named Alden — played by Steve Way — screws around with the cops, and I let out a reflexive ”hell yeah.”

I’ve gone on this full rant before and I swear I won’t do it again, at least not right now, but I will give you the short version: it makes me puuuuuuuuke to see disabled characters on television always shown as either inspirational little angels or miserable millionaires. We can also be funny and shitty and, like, anything any other character gets to be. This is not a problem unique to the disability community. Hollywood is notoriously bad at this stuff. That’s why I like to stop and actually take note when someone does something right. Positive reinforcement. Good job on this one, team.

THREE: The heart of the show is the relationship between the killer, Catherine (played by Lola Petticrew), and the FBI agent hunting her down, Alice (played by Emmy Rossum). It is a THRILLING dynamic, two characters who are deeply messed up by a crappy world and using their trauma to navigate it in very different ways. Goddamn, these are great performances, bubbling with rage and frustration and intelligence and sometimes spilling all of those things over right onto the screen.

The whole thing, of course, builds to a moment where the two confront each other in a tense meeting, and that scene lived up to everything the show was working toward in a way I wasn’t sure it could pull off. Terrific television. I shouted a little.

TWO: I am, frankly, in awe of the restraint everyone on this show displayed by not having either of the two main characters, at any point, look at the other and explain that the two of them were “not so different, after all,” despite them being the most Not So Different characters I’ve seen in quite some time.

I don’t know how they did it. I would have burned off like six variations of that line by the fourth episode. This is one of many reasons that it’s good Elizabeth Meriwether made this show instead of me.

ONE: The ending sets up an already greenlit second season that I very much want to see. If you haven’t watched the show yet, you have until then to get involved. I recommend doing so. Enjoy a little vengeance once in a while. It’s nice.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— terrific blog about Miss Piggy being our last real movie star

— yes, I will read something titled “An Ode to Redman”

— good thing from Rick Porter’s newsletter about how mining IP for a zillion TV shows might not be the golden ticket studios think it is

— the big GQ profile of Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is paywalled, but if you have a subscription or feel like reading a hard copy while you sip a latte at Barnes & Noble, it’s pretty good

— huge shoutout to Philly meteorologist Cecily Tynan, who retired this week after 30 years on the air and was given this lovely montage filled with some incredible 90s hairstyles on her last day

— speaking of legends signing off after three decades on television: shoutout Karl Ravech

— I had not seen the first season of Adults, but the huge pile of glowing reviews for season two — like this one at The AV Club — convinced me to dive in and I’m enjoying it a bunch

— Coyote vs. Acme ruled – more on this in Friday's newsletter – and I'm pleased to see it putting up big numbers on Rotten Tomatoes

— very intrigued by the Tom Hardy rap album where he does Shakespeare in the Bane voice

— Anne Hathaway is gonna be in the Days of Thunder sequel

— a guy wrote about how he helped murder Tupac in his book and it got him arrested, so that’s an oopsie

— Hooters movie question mark

— diamond necklace heist

— "Pabst Blue Ribbon asks thief to return truck stolen in Montclair with 40,000 pounds of beer inside"

— "An island mysteriously appeared — then disappeared — on B.C.'s largest reservoir"

— LOOK AT THIS FREAKIN GUY

Okay, that's it for this week. Please share and subscribe and try not to go on a murder spree.